The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and Night by Elie Wiesel

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The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and Night by Elie
Wiesel

• Background Information on World War II and the
  Holocaust

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The Book Thief Covers
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and more covers
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Night covers
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The Book Thief

• Fiction
• Setting Nazi Germany, 1939
• Narrated by Death
• Protagonist Liesel Meminger
• Told from perspective of German girl during
  Hitlers rule

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Night

• Setting Sighet, a village in the Carpathian
  Mountains in northern Transylvania, which was
  annexed by Hungary in 1940
• True account of a young Jewish boys, Elie
  Wiesel, struggle to live during the Holocaust.
• Narrated by the author in first person, also the
  protagonist of the story

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Adolf Hitler the FührerRise to Power

• Nazi Party stands for National Socialist German
  Workers Party
• By 1920, Hitler was the official leader of the
  Nazi Party
• 1923 Hitler attempted to overthrow authorities
  in Munich but failed miserably and was sent to
  prison (a hero!)
• 1925 Hitler published Mein Kampf (My Struggle)
  written while in prison

• 1918-WWI ended
• German propaganda had not prepared the nation for
  defeat, resulting in a sense of injured German
  pride
• 1919 The German Workers Party (forerunner of
  Nazi Party) formed Hitler rose to leadership
  because of his emotional and captivating speeches.

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• In Mein Kampf, Hitler uses the main thesis of
  "the Jewish peril," which speaks of an alleged
  Jewish conspiracy to gain world leadership. The
  narrative describes the process by which he
  became increasingly anti-Semitic and
  militaristic, especially during his years in
  Vienna. Yet, the deeper origins of his
  anti-Semitism remain a mystery. He speaks of not
  having met a Jew until he arrived in Vienna, and
  that at first his attitude was liberal and
  tolerant. When he first encountered the
  anti-Semitic press, he says, he dismissed it as
  unworthy of serious consideration. A little later
  and quite suddenly, it seems, he accepted the
  same anti-Semitic views whole-heartedly, which
  became crucial in his program of national
  reconstruction. Becoming acquainted with Zionism,
  which he calls a "great movement," is what Hitler
  claims encouraged his view that one cannot be
  both a German and a Jew.

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• Mein Kampf has also been studied as a work on
  political theory. For example, Hitler announces
  his hatred of what he believed to be the world's
  twin evils Communism and Judaism. The new
  territory that Germany needed to obtain would
  properly nurture the "historic destiny" of the
  German people this goal explains why Hitler
  invaded Europe, both East and West, before he
  launched his attack against Russia. Blaming
  Germanys chief woes on the Weimar Republic, he
  announces that he wants to completely destroy the
  parliamentary system.

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Mein Kampf

• Introduction
• Volume I A Reckoning
• Chapter 1 In the House of My Parents
• Chapter 2 Years of Study and Suffering in Vienna
  
• Chapter 3 General Political Considerations Based
  on My Vienna Period
• Chapter 4 Munich
• Chapter 5 The World War
• Chapter 6 War Propaganda
• Chapter 7 The Revolution
• Chapter 8 The Beginning of My Political Activity
  
• Chapter 9 The 'German Workers' Party'
• Chapter 10 Causes of the Collapse
• Chapter 11 Nation and Race
• Chapter 12 The First Period of Development of
  the German National Socialist Workers' Party

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Rise of Nazi Power

• Between 1925 and 1929, the party grew to 108,000
  members
• 1929 Great Depression had a large impact on
  Germany

• On January 30, 1933, President Paul von
  Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor

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• As part of a policy of internal coordination, the
  Nazis created Special Courts to punish political
  dissent. In a parallel move from April to
  October, the regime passed civil laws that barred
  Jews from holding positions in the civil service,
  in legal and medical professions, and in teaching
  and university positions. The Nazis encouraged
  boycotts of Jewish-owned shops and businesses and
  began book burnings of writings by Jews and by
  others not approved by the Reich.

• Within months of Hitler's appointment as
  Chancellor, the Dachau concentration camp was
  created. The Nazis began arresting Communists,
  Socialists, and labor leaders. Dachau became a
  training center for concentration camp guards and
  later commandants who were taught terror tactics
  to dehumanize their prisoners.

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• On August 2, 1934, President Hindenburg died.
  Hitler combined the offices of Reich Chancellor
  and President, declaring himself Führer .
• Hitler announced the Nuremberg Laws in 1935.
  These laws stripped Jews of their civil rights as
  German citizens and separated them from Germans
  legally, socially, and politically. Jews were
  also defined as a separate race under "The Law
  for the Protection of German Blood and Honor."
  Being Jewish was now determined by ancestry thus
  the Germans used race, not religious beliefs or
  practices, to define the Jewish people. This law
  forbade marriages or sexual relations between
  Jews and Germans. Hitler warned darkly that if
  this law did not resolve the problem, he would
  turn to the Nazi Party for a final solution. More
  than 120 laws, decrees, and ordinances were
  enacted after the Nuremburg Laws and before the
  outbreak of World War II, further eroding the
  rights of German Jews. Many thousands of Germans
  who had not previously considered themselves Jews
  found themselves defined as "non-Aryans."

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1936 Olympics in Germany

• Berlin hosted the Olympics. Hitler viewed this as
  a perfect opportunity to promote a favorable
  image of Nazism to the world. Monumental stadiums
  and other Olympic facilities were constructed as
  Nazi showpieces.
• While two Germans with some Jewish ancestry were
  invited to be on the German Olympic team, the
  German Jewish athlete Gretel Bergmann, one of the
  world's most accomplished high jumpers, was not.
• The great irony of these Olympics was that, in
  the land of "Aryan superiority," it was Jesse
  Owens, the African-American track star, who was
  the undisputed hero of the games.

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Jesse Owens

• Jesse Owens grew up in Moulton, Alabama
• Received a scholarship to run at Ohio State
• Won FOUR gold medals in Germany during the 1936
  Olympics

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• Within days, the Nazis forced the Jews to
  transfer their businesses to Aryan hands and
  expelled all Jewish pupils from public schools.
  With brazen arrogance, the Nazis further
  persecuted the Jews by forcing them to pay for
  the damages of Kristallnacht .

• In Germany, open anti-Semitism became
  increasingly accepted, climaxing in the "Night of
  Broken Glass" (Kristallnacht) on November 9,
  1938. Basically, this was a free-for-all against
  the Jews, during which nearly 1,000 synagogues
  were set on fire and 76 were destroyed. More than
  7,000 Jewish businesses and homes were looted,
  about one hundred Jews were killed and as many as
  30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to
  concentration camps to be tormented, many for
  months.

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Night of Broken Glass
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More Night of Broken Glass
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World War II Begins

• On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland,
  officially starting World War II. Two days later,
  Britain and France, now obliged by treaty to help
  Poland, declared war on Germany. Hitler's armies
  used the tactic of Blitzkrieg, or lightning war,
  a combination of armored attack accompanied by
  air assault. Before British and French power
  could be brought to bear, in less than four
  weeks, Poland collapsed. Germany's military
  conquest put it in a position to establish the
  New Order, a plan to abuse and eliminate
  so-called undesirables, notably Jews and Slavs.

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• A Jew is forced to cut the beard of another Jew
  as a form of public humiliation.

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The Ghettos

• The Nazis' ghettos differed, however, in that
  they were a preliminary step in the annihilation
  of the Jews, rather than a method to just isolate
  them from the rest of society. As the war against
  the Jews progressed, the ghettos became
  transition areas, used as collection points for
  deportation to death camps and concentration
  camps

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Discrimination

• On November 23, 1939 General Governor Hans Frank
  issued an ordinance that Jews ten years of age
  and older living in the General Government had
  to wear the Star of David on armbands or pinned
  to the chest or back. This made the
  identification of Jews easier when the Nazis
  began issuing orders establishing ghettos.

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Jews were intimidated
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Ghettos 1941

• Ghetto life was wretched. The ghettos were
  filthy, with poor sanitation. Extreme
  overcrowding forced many people to share a room.
  Disease was rampant. Staying warm was difficult
  during bitter cold winters without adequate warm
  clothes and heating fuel. Food was in such short
  supply that many slowly starved to death.

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• Jewish ration card entitled the Jew to 300
  calories per day!

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Children starved in the ghettos
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1941-1942 The Camps
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• Camps were an essential part of the Nazis'
  systematic oppression and mass murder of Jews,
  political adversaries, and others considered
  socially and racially undesirable. There were
  concentration camps, forced labor camps,
  extermination or death camps, transit camps, and
  prisoner-of-war camps. The living conditions of
  all camps were brutal.

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Dachau

• Dachau, one of the first Nazi concentration
  camps, opened in March 1933, and at first
  interned only known political opponents of the
  Nazis Communists, Social Democrats, and others
  who had been condemned in a court of law.
  Gradually, a more diverse group was imprisoned,
  including Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, Gypsies,
  dissenting clergy, homosexuals, as well as others
  who were denounced for making critical remarks
  about the Nazis.

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Death Camps

• Six death or extermination camps were constructed
  in Poland. These so-called death factories were
  Auschwitz-Birkenau , Treblinka , Belzec ,
  Sobibór, Lublin (also called Majdanek), and
  Chelmno . The primary purpose of these camps was
  the methodical killing of millions of innocent
  people. The first, Chelmno, began operating in
  late 1941. The others began their operations in
  1942.

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The Final Solution

• In January 1942, SS official Reinhard Heydrich
  held a meeting of Nazi government officials to
  present the Final Solution. At this meeting,
  known as the Wannsee Conference , the Nazi
  officials agreed to SS plans for the transport
  and destruction of all 11 million Jews of Europe.
  The Nazis would use the latest in twentieth
  century technology, cost efficient engineering
  and mass production techniques for the sole
  purpose of killing off the following racial
  groups Jews, Russian prisoners of war, and
  Gypsies. Their long-range plans, unrealized,
  included targeting some 30 million Slavs for
  death.

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Mass Murders

• Starting early in 1942, the Jewish genocide
  (sometimes called the Judeocide) went into full
  operation. Auschwitz 2 (Birkenau), Treblinka,
  Belzec, and Sobibór began operations as death
  camps. There was no selection process Jews were
  destroyed upon arrival.

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Gates leading in to Auschwitz Work will make you
free.
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• By the end of 1943 the Germans closed down the
  death camps built specifically to exterminate
  Jews. The death tolls for the camps are as
  follows Treblinka, (750,000 Jews) Belzec,
  (550,000 Jews) Sobibór, (200,000 Jews) Chelmno,
  (150,000 Jews) and Lublin (also called Majdanek,
  50,000 Jews). Auschwitz continued to operate
  through the summer of 1944 its final death total
  was about 1 million Jews and 1 million non-Jews.
  Allied encirclement of Germany was nearly
  complete in the fall of 1944. The Nazis began
  dismantling the camps, hoping to cover up their
  crimes. By the late winter/early spring of 1945,
  they sent prisoners walking to camps in central
  Germany. Thousands died in what became known as
  death marches.

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Death Marches
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Resistance

• Resistance against the Nazis--planned and
  spontaneous, armed and unarmed--took many forms
  throughout WWII and the Holocaust. For many, the
  resistance was a struggle for physical existence.
  Some escaped through legal or illegal emigration.
  Others hid. Those who remained, struggled to
  obtain life's essentials by smuggling the food,
  clothing, and medicine necessary to survive.

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• On October 7, the sonderkommando (prisoners
  forced to handle the bodies of gas chamber
  victims) succeeded in blowing up one of the four
  crematoria at Auschwitz . All of the saboteurs
  were captured and killed.
• Resistance continued until the end of the war.

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Sonderkommandos
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Rescue and Liberation

• Throughout the Holocaust, victims received help
  from rescuers. Courageous German citizens were
  able to hide and protect thousands of Jews and
  other victims of oppression until the defeat of
  Nazi Germany and the liberation of the death
  camps by the Allied forces.

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• Those who attempted to rescue Jews and others
  from the Nazi death sentence did so at great risk
  to their own safety. Anyone found harboring a
  Jew, for example, was shot or publicly hanged as
  a warning to others. Sharing scarce resources
  with those in hiding was an additional sacrifice
  on the part of the rescuer. Despite the risks,
  thousands followed the dictates of conscience.

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Heroes

• Better known rescuers include Raoul Wallenberg,
  the Swedish diplomat who led the effort that
  saved 100,000 Hungarian Jews in 1944. Another
  rescuer, Oscar Schindler, saved over 1,000 Polish
  Jews from their deaths. Huguenot Pastor André
  Trocme led the rescue effort in Le
  Chambon-sur-Lignon, France, which hid and
  protected 5,000 Jews. Over 13,000 men and women
  who risked their lives to rescue Jews have been
  honored as "Righteous Gentiles" at the Yad Vashem
  Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. Thousands more
  remain unrecognized.

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HEROES
Oscar Schindler
Raoul Wallenberg
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1945 Horror and Shock

• As Allied troops entered Nazi-occupied
  territories, the final rescue and liberation
  transpired. Allied troops who stumbled upon the
  concentration camps were shocked at what they
  found. Large ditches filled with bodies, rooms of
  baby shoes, and gas chambers with fingernail
  marks on the walls all testified to Nazi
  brutality. General Eisenhower insisted on
  photographing and documenting the horror so that
  future generations would not ignore history and
  repeat its mistakes. He also forced villagers
  neighboring the death and concentration camps to
  view what had occurred in their own backyards.

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Survivors
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Elie, his mother, and two sisters before the
Holocaust
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Elie today
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Elie at Aushwitz
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The Jews 1940 - 1945

• The Holocaust

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Prelude to the Final Solution

• When Hitler seized power in 1933 he used his new
  powers under the Enabling Law to begin his
  attack on the Jews.
• In 1938, the Nazi attack on the Jews changed and
  became more violent with Himmler launching
  Kristallnacht on 11th November 1938.
• By 1939, half of Germanys 500,000 Jews had
  emigrated to escape Nazi persecution.

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Prelude to the Final Solution

• In 1939, Germany invaded Poland which had a much
  larger population of 3 million Jews.
• In 1941, Germany invaded Russia which had a
  population of 5 million Jews.

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Change of Tactics Einsatzgruppen

• Himmler sent four specially trained SS units
  called Einsatzgruppen battalions into German
  occupied territory and shot at least 1 million
  Jews.
• Victims were taken to deserted areas where they
  were made to dig their own graves and shot.
• When the SS ran out of bullets they sometimes
  killed their victims using flame throwers.

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Change of Tactics Einsatzgruppen
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The Final Solution

• In January 1942, Himmler decided to change
  tactics once again and called a special
  conference at Wannsee.
• At this conference it was decided that the
  existing methods were too inefficient and that a
  new Final Solution was necessary.

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Wannsee Conference
Shooting was too inefficient as the bullets were
needed for the war effort
Women, children, the old the sick were to be
sent for special treatment.
The young and fit would go through a process
called destruction through work.
On arrival the Jews would go through a process
called selection.
How was the Final Solution going to be organised?
Jews were to be rounded up and put into transit
camps called Ghettoes
The remaining Jews were to be shipped to
resettlement areas in the East.
The Jews living in these Ghettos were to be used
as a cheap source of labour.
Conditions in the Ghettos were designed to be so
bad that many die whilst the rest would be
willing to leave these areas in the hope of
better conditions
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How did the Nazi decide who was Jewish?

• At the Wannsee conference it was decided that if
  one of persons parents was Jewish, then they
  were Jewish.
• However, if only one of their grandparents had
  been Jewish then they could be classified as
  being German.
• In 1940, all Jews had to have their passports
  stamped with the letter J and had to wear the
  yellow Star of David on their jacket or coat.

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Where were the Death Camps built?
The work of the Einsatzgruppen
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What tactics did the Nazis use to get the Jews to
leave the Ghettos?
Deception
New arrivals at the Death camps were given
postcards to send to their friends.
Starvation
The Jews were told that they were going to
resettlement areas in the East.
The Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were only fed a
1000 calories a day .
Tactics
In some Ghettos the Jews had to purchase their
own train tickets.
A Human being needs 2400 calories a day to
maintain their weight
Terror
They were told to bring the tools of their trade
and pots and pans.
The SS publicly shot people for smuggling food or
for any act of resistance
Hungry people are easier to control
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Children Dying of Starvation in the Warsaw Ghetto
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SS Tactics Dehumanisation

• The SS guards who murdered the Jews were
  brainwashed with Anti-Semitic propaganda.
• The Jews were transported in cattle cars in
  terrible conditions.
• Naked, dirty and half starved people look like
  animals, which helped to reinforce the Nazi
  propaganda.
• The SS used to train their new guards by
  encouraging them to set fire to a pit full of
  live victims usually children.

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Tactics What happened to new arrivals?
At Auschwitz the trains pulled into a mock up of
a normal station.
All new arrivals went through a process known as
selection.
Mothers, children, the old sick were sent
straight to the showers which were really the
gas chambers.
The Jews were helped off the cattle trucks by
Jews who were specially selected to help the Nazis
Deception Selection
The able bodied were sent to work camp were they
were killed through a process known as
destruction through work.
At some death camps the Nazis would play records
of classical music to help calm down the new
arrivals.
At Auschwitz the new arrivals were calmed down by
a Jewish orchestra playing classical music.
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Entrance to Auschwitz
Notice how it has been built to resemble a
railway station
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Auschwitz Orchestra
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Map of Auschwitz
New Arrivals
Showers
Destruction Through Work
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Auschwitz from the air
Notice how the Death camp is set out like a
factory complex
The Nazis used industrial methods to murder the
Jews and process their dead bodies
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The Gas Chambers

• The Nazis would force large groups of prisoners
  into small cement rooms and drop canisters of
  Zyklon B, or prussic acid, in its crystal form
  through small holes in the roof.
• These gas chambers were sometimes disguised as
  showers or bathing houses.

The SS would try and pack up to 2000 people into
this gas chamber
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The outside of the Gas Chamber
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Processing the bodies

• Specially selected Jews known as the
  sonderkommando were used to to remove the gold
  fillings and hair of people who had been gassed.
• The Sonderkommando Jews were also forced to feed
  the dead bodies into the crematorium.

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The Ovens at Dachau
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Dead bodies waiting to be processed
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Shoes waiting to be processed by the
sonderkommando
Taken inside a huge glass case in the Auschwitz
Museum. This represents one day's collection at
the peak of the gassings, about twenty five
thousand pairs.
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Destruction Through Work
This photo was taken by the Nazis to show just
how you could quite literally work the fat of the
Jews by feeding them 200 calories a day
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Destruction Through Work
Same group of Jews 6 weeks later
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Was the Final Solution successful?

• The Nazis aimed to kill 11 million Jews at the
  Wannsee Conference in 1941
• Today there are only 2000 Jews living in Poland.
• The Nazis managed to kill at least 6 million Jews.

• Men like Schindler helped Jews escape the Final
  Solution.
• Not all Jews went quietly into the gas cambers.
• In 1943, the Warsaw Ghetto, like many others
  revolted against the Nazis when the Jews realised
  what was really happening.

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The End

• Evil is when a few good men decide to do nothing.